


An Unknown Alphabet

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, the First Order are Assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 16:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Finn's never known what the marks on his arms mean, but he knows the officers don't like them. Poe and Rey have never been able to read their soulmarks. Still, everything will work out somehow.Beta by my very Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	An Unknown Alphabet

FN-2187 tries hard to be like the other Stormtroopers, but though he’s top of the class in everything - tactics, weapons, hand-to-hand - he can’t quite seem to make himself fit in. Sometimes, lying in his bunk staring up at the ceiling and wondering where he’s going wrong, he finds himself blaming - irrationally, he knows - the markings on his arms. Everyone else has odd markings _too_ , but most Stormtroopers only have them on _one_ arm, and every time one of the officers sees FN-2187’s bare arms and notices that they’re _both_ marked, he or she scowls blackly and turns away. Which means that all the ‘troopers _also_ assume that having both arms marked is a bad thing, even if they don’t know why.

But in his less bleakly superstitious moments, FN-2187 knows that’s not all it is. It’s his inability to _act_ like the other Stormtroopers that truly gets him shunned. He can’t bear to leave a member of his squad behind, even when he really should; he can’t bear to shoot at civilians, even simulated ones. He dares, on occasion, to question orders.

Even the Stormtroopers he _helps_ don’t like him. He’s too strange.

Still, sometimes in the dark hours when he’s supposed to be sleeping, FN-2187 lies there in his bunk tracing the odd lines and angles of his markings, first one arm and then the other, and wondering why they make the officers scowl.

*

Poe’s soulmark came in when he was nine. It was a very good day, up until the point when his mother and father looked at each other, after hours of poring over holodictionaries, and said, “We can’t read it.”

After that it got a bit less exciting, but Poe is a cheerful soul, and he decided then and there that he would find out what language his soulmark was. How hard could it be?

Twenty years later, older and at least a little wiser, he still hasn’t learned what language his soulmark is written in. It’s not Aurebesh (that was easy) or Huttese or Mando’a. It’s not Jawa or Ewok or Ubese. It’s not any of the Twi’lek languages, or Shyriiwook, or even _Sith_. Poe has hunted down examples of eight _hundred_ different languages, has gained a reputation for being a bit strange about it, and has never found anything that looks quite like the angular, vivid markings on his right arm.

He’s not giving up, he’ll never give up, but he’s starting to wonder exactly how far away his soulmate must be, for the language they write in to be so _very_ hard to find.

*

Rey doesn’t think about her soulmark much. It’s usually covered by her sleeves, since exposed skin on a desert planet is a bad idea, and in any case she can’t read it. That’s actually a little odd, she thinks whenever she _does_ think about it - she can read eight languages and puzzle out simple words in a dozen more, thanks to the droids and simulators she’s scavenged, but the angular marks on her arm don’t appear in any of the scripts she knows.

But most of the time she’s busy surviving and waiting for her parents to come back, and the marks on her arm are just a promise that _somewhere_ out there, somewhere in the galaxy, there’s someone who is right for her. Once her parents find her, Rey will go looking for them.

Maybe the marks are in the language of her own people. That would be very nice indeed.

*

Finn wakes up, sore but alive, which is a nice surprise. He’s on his stomach on a bed in what certainly looks, at least at first glance, like a medbay - which must mean he’s with the Resistance, because Stormtroopers who are injured as badly as he was are decommissioned, and in any case he’s a traitor to the First Order and they wouldn’t have bothered to heal him just to shoot him publicly. He hopes.

The doctor who comes bustling in scant moments after he wakes is not wearing a First Order uniform, so there’s _that_ question answered. She helps him sit up, checks his eyes and taps his knees (Finn’s honestly not sure why), and examines his back, then nods in apparent satisfaction. “You’re healing well,” she tells him. “Commander Dameron will be here in a few minutes - he’s been dropping by every day, as it happens - and I’ll let him take you down to the Quartermaster to get set up with a room and some clothing. You’ll need to come back every day for me to check your back, until I tell you otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Finn says, a little dazed.

She nods and leaves the room again, and a few minutes later, just as Finn is starting to wonder if he misunderstood and should have followed her, Poe comes bursting in, smiling so wide it looks like it hurts. “Finn!” he cries. “Buddy! You’re awake! How do you feel?” The little droid is whirling around Poe’s feet and beeping at the top of its speakers, apparently just as excited as Poe is.

“I feel...pretty good, actually,” Finn admits, and stands up. He’s not got a shirt, which is a little distressing, but presumably the Quartermaster will issue him one. The lack of shoes is actually more worrisome. Poe looks him up and down and up again and - stops, staring at Finn’s bare arms.

Finn fights the urge to hide his markings. Oh kriff, if _Poe_ looks at him the way the officers used to - if Poe hates him because Finn has two markings, whatever the kriff that means - Finn doesn’t know what he’ll do. Maybe cry.

*

Poe knows he must be worrying Finn, but he cannot for the life of him stop staring at Finn’s arm - at his own name, his own _signature_ , written clear as day on Finn’s wrist. He wants to reach out and touch it, wants to fall to his knees and weep in relief, wants to - wants to do a lot of things.

What he does, though, is hold up a hand and say, “Wait wait wait, hang on, stay _right there_ , I’ll be right back,” and ducks out of the room to grab the nearest datapad off a table. Finn is standing right where Poe left him when Poe scrambles back into the room, looking distressed and confused, and Poe wants to kiss that expression right off his face, but first - “Here, please, humor me, please, just write your name,” he says, and shoves the datapad and stylus into Finn’s hands.

Finn gives him a _very_ odd look, but he sets the stylus to the datapad obediently, pauses, and then smiles, just a little. “My _name_ ,” he says, and writes something with swift, decisive movements, then holds the datapad out to Poe.

Poe takes it and stares down at the angular, _beautiful_ letters in steadily growing joy. “Finn,” he says wonderingly. “Finn, the First Order uses a different _alphabet_ than the rest of the galaxy does.”

“...What?” Finn asks, sounding immensely baffled.

“Look,” Poe says, pointing at the nametag on his flightsuit. He came right from training today, and he’s never been gladder to still be wearing the ridiculous orange thing than he is right now. Finn leans forward to peer at it, and then shrugs.

“I can’t read that - _wait_ ,” he says, eyes wide, and raises his arm to compare. “That - those are some of the markings on my arm!”

“It says ‘Dameron,’” Poe says, beaming. “It’s in Aurebesh, in the common script, and your right arm says my _name_.”

“...Why?” Finn asks, clearly baffled. Poe grins and rolls up his own sleeve, baring the marks he’s never before been able to read, and Finn gapes down at them. “Wait. You have _my_ name on _your_ arm.”

“Yes,” Poe says, so happy he could cry, or dance, or just maybe kiss Finn until they’re both breathless. “I do. We’re soulmates. I’ve found you at last.”

*

Rey comes back from Ahch-To with a lightsaber in one hand and the Force throbbing in her mind, and Finn meets her on the tarmac of the new Resistance base with an embrace that makes her feel truly _safe_ for the first time in a very long time indeed.

“Finn,” she says, beaming. “It’s so good to see you again.” Poe Dameron and BB-8 are waiting off to the side, letting her have this reunion, and she’s grateful for that.

“And you,” Finn says. “I have a lot to tell you.”

They don’t get a chance to really talk privately until after dinner that night, though, when Rey finds herself curled up on what is apparently Finn’s bunk in Poe’s room. There’s a datapad propped up on the nightstand with something written on it, and Rey gives it a cursory glance as she sits down and then a much longer one. “What does that say?” she says slowly.

“It says ‘Finn,’” Poe says, beaming. “In the script the First Order uses, because they’re just the sort of assholes who won’t let their Stormtroopers learn the _common_ script.”

“It _what_ ,” Rey says, and yanks her sleeve up, and looks up to see that Finn has rolled up the sleeves on _both_ his arms, and her name is as clear as Jakku daylight on his left arm.

“I’ve been learning the common script,” Finn says, kneeling down in front of her and holding out his left arm. Rey traces her fingers over the letters of her name. “But I learned how to write your name a very long time ago.”

“It’s you,” Rey says, wondering and delighted. “Of course it’s you.”

*

Finn stretches out on the blanket under the tree. It’s a rare, priceless day off, so of course Rey and Poe are arguing about what model of X-Wing is the best over the remains of their picnic. Finn’s soulmates can be a bit silly sometimes. But Rey is holding Finn’s hand, and Poe is scratching his fingers very gently through Finn’s hair, and the sky is very blue and the grass is cool under the blanket, and really Finn can’t find anything to complain about at the moment.

He knows what the marks on his arms mean, now.

They mean he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm imaginarygolux on tumblr - drop on by!


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